ALT-20 How to use the Internet to Work from Home
The beauty of the Internet is that it has allowed many people to achieve what they've always longed for in their professional life. It's opened doors that, for many people, have not only been closed, but have been hidden away from them. Even if they had wanted to try to open one, they wouldn't have known where to find it. Not any more. The Internet continues to shrink our world, and that includes the world of working. It's now possible to work almost anywhere, and more and more people are choosing that "anywhere" to be home.
The irony of using the Internet to work from home is that you don't actually have to know a great deal about the Internet in order to use it. All you need to know is what you want the Internet to do for you; how you want it to help you to work from home. If you're setting yourself up in business and want to promote your products or services online then the Internet will ensure that you reach as wide an audience as possible. You can pay someone else to take care of the technological aspects of working online that you don't want to, or don't know how to, deal with. From building your website to hosting it for you to maintaining it, there's a company who can do it all. All you need to do is to know what you want your website to achieve.
If you don't have a service or product to offer but want to swap a conventional working environment for the comfort of your own home, then the Internet offers plenty of opportunities to do so. All you need is access to the Internet and the ability to be able to carry out the task that's required of you. This could be anything from computer programming to data input. Such is the technology nowadays that working from home differs very little to working in a more traditional environment.
Web cams are able to check that you're at your computer, while snap shots of your computer screen can verify exactly what you're working on (or not!). For some this is perhaps a little too "Big Brother" for their liking, especially those who see working from home as a chance to enjoy a little flexibility that wasn't present in the office or on the shop floor, but others are more than happy to work in such a way. It's important to remember that some people have little option when it comes to where they work; some people, for whatever reasons, have to work from home.
The Internet has allowed anyone with a creative flair to flourish. No longer do they have to transport their goods from pillar to post, but can use the Internet to set up an international stall. There are a huge number of online markets where individuals can promote and sell their products; these cater for the one-man band seller who produces individual one-off pieces to the "power seller" who offers mass produced items at a lower cost than in the High Street shops.
And it's not just the creative types who sew or paint that are using the Internet to enable them to work from home. There's a rapidly growing number of people who are finding that the Internet is not only a great place in which to voice their opinions, but one in which they can get paid for doing so. As the Internet grows so does the need for website content and opportunities exist for anyone who can produce good quality website content. Blogging is another way to use the Internet to enable you to work from home: create your own blog and exploit the opportunities to be had from writing about a subject that interests you. The Internet continues to change our view of how we work. We no longer have to leave the house for the daily 9-to-5, which means, of course, that we no longer have to work 9-to-5. The opportunities are endless.
